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I read with interest about the rising fuel prices due to the upheaval in Venezuela, the colder than normal winter, and the prospect of war with Iraq ["Over a barrel," Feb. 12].
When I filled my car recently, the price was $1.55 per gallon, up a few cents from last year. It was no big deal to me, even though I use my car for my livelihood.
What bugs me is to hear people complain about gas rising a few pennies, yet think nothing of paying $1 a bottle for water, which comes to $8 a gallon for water.
Anybody know what "Evian" is spelled backwards?
Bob Ford Stafford Date published: 3/6/2003
www.upi.com By Ian Campbell UPI Chief Economics Correspondent From the Business & Economics Desk Published 3/5/2003 6:56 PM
Duct tape is selling, but not much else. The problem is "geopolitical," "war," "Iraq" and "layoffs."
It cannot be very often that the word "geopolitical" has appeared 12 times in the not very long Beige Book report, the U.S. Federal Reserve's eight times per year summary of economic conditions, the latest of which was released Wednesday afternoon.
It does this time. The report provides yet more evidence of the decline of the U.S. consumer, daunted by imminent war and uncertainty about the economy.
"Many reports indicated that geopolitical and economic uncertainties were constraining consumer and business spending," the Fed says it its summary.
Duct tape, which doesn't seem to be the sternest of protection against a terrorist attack, is being bought for its defensive qualities. And "defensive" describes the usually unstoppable U.S. consumer.
"Overall consumer spending remained weak during January and February," the Fed writes. Even with the short-term interest rate at 1.25 percent and the government slashing taxes, consumption is weak. That is a recent development, which takes the U.S. economy into hazardous new territory.
The territory comes in part with the prospective invasion of Iraq. The word "war" appears nine times in the Beige Book; "Iraq" six times. All over the country, in different sectors of the economy, the weight of impending war is being felt.
"Commercial lending remained weak, in part because of the uncertainty over Iraq," the Richmond Fed says.
Time for a nice new car? "Compared with contacts in other industries, auto dealers appeared to be more adversely affected by uncertainty over a possible war with Iraq," the Kansas Fed says.
There will be "no sign of a real pick-up in activity until the Iraq situation is cleared up," says a plastics producer in North Carolina.
Rising oil prices don't help either. They are being "pushed up by continued global uncertainties in Iraq and Venezuela," the Dallas Fed reports
Yet war is only half the problem. The St. Louis Fed found car dealers reporting that sales in December and January fell from year-earlier levels. "Almost all contacts," the Fed said, attributed this to "the threat of war" and "to an uncertain economy."
"Layoffs," a word occurring five times in the Beige Book, are the threat.
The summary says: "State fiscal woes were cited as contributing to layoffs in the Minneapolis and Kansas City regions."
The Minneapolis Fed reports more than 1,000 layoffs in the high-tech and financial services sectors -- and a bus manufacturer.
From the Boston Fed, the reports are particularly bleak. "About one-half of the manufacturing contacts expect to shrink their workforce in coming months." Most of the rest are holding steady "following layoffs in recent months."
Boston adds another negative factor for economic prospects: "In 2003, merit pay increases are or will be modest, ranging from zero percent to 4 percent at most firms."
War and economic uncertainty are then the themes of this Beige Book. When the next one appears on April 23, there can be little uncertainty about one thing: the war will already be being waged or be over.
If the war is swiftly won, will the economy then be stronger?
A cloud, it is true, would have lifted. Oil prices would come down. But war is only one of the clouds hanging over the U.S. economy. The fiscal position is bad. State and municipal governments are having to cut back on staff and spending. The consumer, so long a free spender, was and is uncertain about the economy, not just Iraq, and is right to be.
The economy's decline from those euphoric days when money grew on trees known as "stocks" continues. War is just an ugly episode on the way down.
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(Comments to: icampbell@upi.com)
www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue
Relatively unknown children’s affairs researcher Maria Angelica Sepulveda has been elected to serve on Child Watch International board of directors for the 2003-2006 period.
Child Watch International Research Network is based in Oslo, Norway and is said to be a leading light in the research of children’s standards of living throughout the world ... it has centered research over the last couple of years on the implementation of children’s rights. She was elected at a conference of directors in Thailand to which she was invited.
www.washingtonpost.com By Nora Boustany Wednesday, March 5, 2003; Page A14
Sakie Yokota said she still lives in the moment when her 13-year-old daughter, Megumi, went missing. For years, the girl's room and her world of schoolbooks, dolls and dresses remained untouched. Today they are neatly packaged, awaiting her return.
"I have not been able to forget for a second the exact moment when my daughter vanished," Yokota said yesterday in an interview at the Mayflower Hotel. "I am still in that moment when she was lifted out of her life, and I am still waiting for her to come back to it. It has been very, very painful."
Megumi disappeared in 1977 while on her way home from badminton practice, walking along a road in the city of Niigata that leads to the dark, windswept shores of the Sea of Japan. At the time, no one suspected that North Korean agents had abducted the girl, stuffing her in a canvas bag and locking her aboard a ship bound for Pyongyang, where she would join other kidnapped Japanese in training North Korean spies in Japanese customs and language.
Now, at a time of heightened anxiety over North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the parents, relatives and other supporters of Japanese abducted by the Communist state are in Washington to appeal to legislators and the public. Frustrated in their efforts to gain more information about their missing loved ones -- or the return of those they believe to be alive -- they want the United States to take up their cause in any future talks with North Korea.
"We wanted Americans to realize there was another major cause," Yokota said. "People have been subjected to a terror that is ongoing: North Korea's continued terrorism. We want this to be a focus as well." In addition, she said, the United States ought to have leverage with other countries such as Russia and China that can bring pressure on Pyongyang.
When family members met with U.S. Ambassador Howard H. Baker Jr. in Tokyo last week, he advised them to take their case to Washington "as soon as possible," said her husband, Shigeru Yokota, who added that similar efforts by the Japanese government are at a stalemate.
For six years after Megumi's kidnapping, the Yokotas kept their front-porch light on so their daughter would find her way home. When they moved away from Niigata in 1983, they left a note for her.
It was not until a defector and former spy from North Korea testified in 1997 that he had seen the dimpled girl that North Korea's involvement in the disappearance of several Japanese nationals was acknowledged. On Sept. 17 last year, during normalization talks that North Korea hoped would help obtain aid from Japan, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi that Japanese citizens, including Megumi, had been grabbed off Japanese shores.
North Korean officials said Megumi committed suicide in 1993, but her parents do not believe she is dead. North Korea did not provide her remains, first claiming that they were moved, then that they were washed away in a flood. In addition, the Yokotas said, other North Korean defectors had claimed there were sightings of their daughter.
The authorities in Pyongyang produced a photo of a 15-year-old girl born to Megumi, and DNA testing of hair and blood samples proved a match with her grandparents. The Yokotas wrote their granddaughter two letters, but have no proof they were delivered, and a request to meet her was declined.
Asked if she wanted to believe her daughter was still alive, Sakie Yokota shook her head. "It is not that I want to believe, I believe she is alive and so does our family, as do her younger twin brothers," she said.
From his left breast pocket, Shigeru Yokota pulled out a tortoise-shell comb in a brown leather case, Megumi's birthday gift to him the day before she disappeared.
"The leather used to be light," he said. "Now it is dark. It is because of my finger oil; I am always pulling it out to stroke it. I touch it and I think of my daughter."